The deep sea and the deep marine seafloor form an extensive and complex bio-geosphere system. It modulates global climate and global ocean circulation, contains many of today’s and tomorrow’s marine resources, and hosts a partly unknown, but significant part of earth’s biosphere. The Deep Sea Frontier Initiative is a new European research initiative in which the three research communities of ocean drilling (
IODP), ocean margin research, and seafloor observatories (
ESONET NoE and EMSO) will combine forces to substantially advance our knowledge base in areas such as (geo)hazards, global climate change and the sustainable exploitation of biological and geological resources of the deep sea and its floor.